Buoys that collect oceanographic and atmospheric data (“weather buoys”) are currently deployed, either moored or drifting, throughout the world's oceans and bodies of water. Weather buoys collect various data such as wind velocity (steady and gusting), wind direction, barometric pressure, water temperature, water currents, wave height, and wave direction.
Deploying and maintaining buoys in the ocean is laborious and expensive. The ocean is also a hostile dynamic environment, with moored weather buoys going adrift and with moored and drifting weather buoys being damaged or broken. Because of these challenges, there are a limited number of weather buoys in the world. Furthermore, very few weather buoys or other monitoring systems are deployed in the nearshore environment (within 400 meters of the shore). Waves crest and break in the nearshore environment and, because of this water movement, the bathymetry is also changing. For these reasons, there are very few nearshore environmental monitoring systems maintained around the world.